Background: I debated three years in high school policy at Little Rock Central High School and then debated four years in Parli and LD at Western Kentucky University, where I did okay at a few tournaments. I have been judging high school policy debate since I graduated from high school and have spent the last year coaching a fairly successful national circuit high school policy team. NFA will only be my second LD tournament this year to judge, but after doing it for four years I have developed some predispositions.
Speed: You should probably go faster, it keeps me awake. I do not fall into the school of thought that speed is exclusive and should be rejected. I have seen very successful slower debaters who have beaten faster teams. This being said, if you read a speed bad argument in front of me, you will likely receive very low speaker points, and I hope that the “offending” debater spreads you out on the position.
Inherency: It is highly unlikely that I will vote for Inherency unless the plan has actually been passed, and then its possible that you could create a distinction that might make me ignore it.
Topicality: Topicality- I generally view topicality as a game of competing interpretations about what interpretation would be better for debate, I do not believe in competing interpretations exclusively but teams should be very specific in any other method of evaluation for topicality (the word reasonability alone is not a framework for evaluating topicality). I have found that teams often do a poor job of comparing standards on topicality and expressing why the impacts to their standards would be comparatively more important. Topicality is like any other argument, impact comparison is important.
Topicality will never be a reverse voting issue.
Procedurals (other than T): I do not believe that the affirmative has to specify anything more than what is demanded by the resolution, the assumption of normal means should be sufficient to guide your research.
If your 1NC strategy is to read a bunch of procedurals, you should change this in front of me.
BE WARNED: I reserve the right to give you very low speaker points if you do this.
Theory- I tend to err neg on theory, the affirmative should probably be able to defend their plan.
That being said I tend to give credence to affirmative theory arguments on PICs if the negative does not have a solvency advocate. Absent a solvency advocate it becomes much less persuasive that an affirmative should be prepared to answer/be able to generate offense against a CP.
Process CPs, Consult CPs, etc., are probably not competitive.
I do not really care if the CP is “topical”.
I find debates about intrinsicness interesting.
Evidence- Evidence quality is much more important than quantity, you should be adept at evidence comparison through a variety of means whether specificity, qualification, etc.
Kritiks-These are probably okay, but I have rarely seen them executed well in LD.
Counterplans-see theory, and you should probably read one if you hope to win on the negative.
Speed: You should probably go faster, it keeps me awake. I do not fall into the school of thought that speed is exclusive and should be rejected. I have seen very successful slower debaters who have beaten faster teams. This being said, if you read a speed bad argument in front of me, you will likely receive very low speaker points, and I hope that the “offending” debater spreads you out on the position.
Inherency: It is highly unlikely that I will vote for Inherency unless the plan has actually been passed, and then its possible that you could create a distinction that might make me ignore it.
Topicality: Topicality- I generally view topicality as a game of competing interpretations about what interpretation would be better for debate, I do not believe in competing interpretations exclusively but teams should be very specific in any other method of evaluation for topicality (the word reasonability alone is not a framework for evaluating topicality). I have found that teams often do a poor job of comparing standards on topicality and expressing why the impacts to their standards would be comparatively more important. Topicality is like any other argument, impact comparison is important.
Topicality will never be a reverse voting issue.
Procedurals (other than T): I do not believe that the affirmative has to specify anything more than what is demanded by the resolution, the assumption of normal means should be sufficient to guide your research.
If your 1NC strategy is to read a bunch of procedurals, you should change this in front of me.
BE WARNED: I reserve the right to give you very low speaker points if you do this.
Theory- I tend to err neg on theory, the affirmative should probably be able to defend their plan.
That being said I tend to give credence to affirmative theory arguments on PICs if the negative does not have a solvency advocate. Absent a solvency advocate it becomes much less persuasive that an affirmative should be prepared to answer/be able to generate offense against a CP.
Process CPs, Consult CPs, etc., are probably not competitive.
I do not really care if the CP is “topical”.
I find debates about intrinsicness interesting.
Evidence- Evidence quality is much more important than quantity, you should be adept at evidence comparison through a variety of means whether specificity, qualification, etc.
Kritiks-These are probably okay, but I have rarely seen them executed well in LD.
Counterplans-see theory, and you should probably read one if you hope to win on the negative.